Save in very rare cases, there is now no need whatever to undergo the dangers of an operation-- no need to risk the surgeon's knife. No need to incur the big expense of going to a hospital-- no need to lose any time from work or business-- no need to be in bed a single day. For since the invention of the Cluthe Truss or Cluthe Automatic Massager, the day of operation is over, save for an occasional case. The Cluthe Truss has probably effected more _permanent_ cures than all the operations ever performed. And is always _safe_, and almost invariably _beneficial_, whether or not it brings complete cure. (Cure is sometimes impossible, as told in another chapter.) _+Why Ordinary Trusses Do More Harm Than Good+_ The country is full of trusses which are nothing but more or less worthless makeshifts. Some with so little merit that they try to hide under other names. Like the junk handed out at drug-stores. Like the traps peddled by the quacks who pose as Hernia "Specialists." Trusses and appliances with belts, bands or springs around the waist, trusses with leg-straps, etc. Some of these trusses cost little more to make than a pair of good suspenders or garters. A little leather, a few pieces of elastic or web band, a cloth-covered pad with sawdust in it, is about all there is to them. So, like suspenders or garters, they absorb perspiration; that rots them so they soon give out. But their greatest weakness isn't in their cheap materials; it's in their unscientific construction, in the fact that they usually do more harm than good. [Sidenote: Your Suspenders Would Do As Much Good As Some Trusses] A rubber band around your waist would do as much good as some of these makeshift trusses and "appliances"; and not be so apt to do harm. Might just as well wear your suspenders or garters over your rupture as some of the trusses and devices with which this country is overrun. Some of these trusses would hold your rupture just about as well if you left them hanging in the closet instead of wearing them. During the many years The Cluthe Rupture Institute was located in New York City, we had daily evidence of the utter worthlessness of all such trusses. Every day, one after another of the victims of such appliances were coming to us for relief. When we examined these patients, we usually found that the rupture had pushed the pads aside and worked out above or below them. Sometimes we found that the pads had worked away from the rupture opening, worked down against the pelvic bone. And the ruptured parts had slipped out and were being squeezed between the pads and the bone. A condition apt to result in strangulation. Some of these patients came to us suffering intense torture from the terrific pressure of such trusses-- pressure perhaps ten times greater than needed-- and this cruel pressure is exerted from the wrong direction, in the wrong place.